During its annual 4G/5G Summit in Hong Kong, Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon 636 processor, which is the successor to the Snapdragon 630 that debuted earlier this year. As you can tell by the name, this is somewhat of an incremental update to the Snapdragon 630, and is the company’s latest mid-tier, high-performance chipset. It features the Kryo 260 CPU, which the company says will deliver a 40-percent performance increase over its predecessor. On top of that, and perhaps the biggest feature of the Snapdragon 636 is that it supports 18:9 aspect ratio displays, up to a Full HD+ resolution. Qualcomm’s TruPalette and EcoPix features are also part of the Snapdragon 636, and they are integrated into the Adreno Visual Processing Subsystem, this will support a superior viewing experience on the device running a Snapdragon 636. The Adreno 509 GPU is a slight upgrade, Qualcomm says it will provide a 10-percent better gaming experience compared to what you’ll find in the Snapdragon 630. It also provides more efficient rendering of 3D graphics.
The Snapdragon 636 was manufactured on a 14nm FinFet process, which means it’s larger than the Snapdragon 835, but it does use the same process as other Snapdragon 600-series processors like the 630 and 660. By making the Snapdragon 636 compatible with the Snapdragon 630 and 660 platforms, manufacturers who are using these chipsets already can easily switch to the Snapdragon 636 without making many changes. For connectivity, Qualcomm has included the Snapdragon X12 LTE modem, which touts peak speeds of up to 600Mbps. Allowing users to get some pretty fast speeds out of their mobile devices.
Additionally, the 14-bit Qualcomm Spectra 160 ISP is also included in the Snapdragon 636. This is going to support cameras up to 24-megapixels and provide zero shutter lag. It also supports smooth zoom, fast autofocus and true-to-life colors for outstanding image quality, at the same time. Finally, the Qualcomm Aqstic audio codec is also included, which supports Hi-Fi audio on the go, and that includes up to 192kHz/24bit music as well as lossless audio files. Qualcomm expects that the Snapdragon 636 will begin shipping to customers in November of 2017. This means that manufacturers will start to get hands on this new chipset next month, with the expectation that devices launching with this new chipset will likely arrive in 2018. The Snapdragon 636 is likely to be a popular chipset in 2018, especially considering how popular the Snapdragon 625 was in 2016 and 2017.